Christian Brueckner, a suspect in the Madeleine McCann case, was acquitted by a German court of raping holiday rep Hazel Behan as well as another woman and a 14-year-old girl in Portugal
A woman who claimed Madeleine McCann suspect Christian Brueckner raped her has pleaded the “very dangerous man” is never released from prison.
Hazel Behan, 41, told a court she was raped by Brueckner at her apartment in Portugal when she was working as a holiday rep. However, the man was last week acquitted of her rape and that of another woman and a 14-year-old girl.
There was not enough evidence to convict German national Brueckner, presiding judge Uta Engemann at the court in Braunschweig said. Brueckner, 47, is though serving time in a German jail for the 2005 rape of a US pensioner, and is a convicted paedophile.
Ms Behan, whose rape was alleged to have happened in 2004 in the Algarve, the same area from which Madeleine went missing, said the not guilty verdict “really hurt, angered” her. Waiving her right to anonymity, the holiday rep, the aged 20, said she was subjected to a prolonged ordeal at knifepoint by a masked man who broke into her apartment and she identified Brueckner by his “piercing eyes”.
“I don’t think he should be let out of prison… I think he poses a threat to other women and children. And I think allowing him to be free is an injustice to us all. Not just on me, but on other people as well,” Ms Behan said.
The holiday rep, who is from Dublin, continued: “I’m afraid for myself, but I’m also afraid for the public. I feel Christian Brueckner is a very dangerous man.”
Brueckner was sentenced in 2019 to seven years for the rape of the 72-year-old American woman in Praia da Luz. That is the same Portuguese seaside resort where Madeleine went missing in 2007 while on a holiday with her parents Kate and Gerry and her baby twin siblings.
Prosecutors in Brueckner’s latest trial described him as a “sadistic psychopath” and called for him to be caged for a further 15 years. But the acquittal this week means he could be released from prison next year, despite a psychiatrist rating him “in the top league of dangerousness”. Brueckner may even be on the streets within days as part of a pre-freedom day-release programme, reports The Sun today.
Chief prosecutor Hans Christian Wolters has pledged to appeal this week’s verdicts, claiming the judges at the court in Braunschweig, northern Germany, were biased from the start.
Brueckner was accused of subjecting Hazel to a violent attack in June 2004 after breaking into her Praia da Rocha apartment. Hazel told the trial how her attacker stood over her bed and woke her by calling her name before proceeding to rape her repeatedly over several hours.
Brueckner was this week cleared of that, and separately of raping a girl of 14 and an elderly British woman. He was also cleared of grabbing a child and performing a sex act on himself, near Praia da Luz weeks before Madeleine was abducted there aged three.
He vehemently denies any part in Madeleine’s disappearance in Praia da Luz in 2007.
